


Ode to Normalcy

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Russia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-08
Updated: 2008-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack/Irina, prompt: queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ode to Normalcy

**Author's Note:**

> For bluerosefairy.

When you were a child, you lived on the fourth floor of a ten-storey apartment block in one of the newer areas of the city, above an incontinent woman and a man with only one leg. You think that perhaps the first floor was occupied by the caretaker and his family, but you don't really remember ever actually seeing the caretaker around. Like most of the men, he was present only through photographs on immaculately clean shelves and tables and a toddler eating warm bread on the block steps. His wife - caretaker in all but name - was the one that took care of the communal garden and of the stairways, and she was the one that organised all the block's children into a team of caterpillar-exterminators. At that tender age, you did not yet know about caterpillars and butterflies; all you knew was that the prized magnolia tree was being devoured by an infestation and so you - like all the rest - would have to shimmy up and across the thin branches, picking off the wriggling things and throwing them on to the ground for the other children to stomp on. You don't really remember an adult watching you during this time, but they must have: climbing trees is a dangerous business, quite unlike normal playtime activities.

You preferred the times you were on the tree, legs wrapped tightly around the branch and feeling vertiginous and oddly triumphant as you picked all the caterpillars off, to the times spent below it, stomping on the green things and watching, fascinated, as they turned to mulch beneath your feet.

Your success at curbing the caterpillars was noticed and soon the caretaker's wife set you to other tasks, each more complex than the rest: weeding the garden and sweeping the walkways and queuing for milk and taking the younger children across the pitted fields to reach morning shift at the local school. Later, you attended the political meetings as expected and all the other meetings, too - not the local ones but those far away from your home city, travelling with a gaggle of school friends and starching your collars the night before to make sure that you are clean and prepared and presentable before this, the endless juries of your political peers.

You are a worker, a necessary, hard-working member of the proletariat, you were told, and it had the ring of praise to it. No one works as hard as you do to ensure the success and health of the body-politic. You are the backbone of the Union, the worker upon whose weary backs the dream of socialism moves ever forward. You are one of thousands, millions of other teenaged girls, identical but for their dedicated to the Union. There is no contest here; only that of who will sacrifice the most.

This particular sacrifice, your superior tells you, will be great. This sacrifice will require you to give up your home, and your family, and all you hold dear. It will sap your strength and eat up your sanity and you will hate yourself, you will not be able to stand yourself in the end - who could, to live such a life? - but you must persevere. For the Union.

And so, you will be introduced to your terrible sacrifice, your terrible duty, and he will smile when he meets you and say that his name is Jack. He'll take you to the movies, and will win things for you at a fairground, and will tell you look amazing in that new dress, bright and beautiful and lit up, like a queen. You will smile and nod and wonder why you ever wanted to be a worker at all.

Sometime later, you will turn to Jack, warm and cushioned in his arms, and tell him, _you're the reason I took it up, you know. You're the reason I stopped being an obedient little worker_, safe in the knowledge that he won't believe you.

In the morning, you will dress and be gone before he wakes up.

 

*

fin


End file.
